Selected Works of Harry Haywood

The following four essays are chapters taken from an otherwise unpublished manuscript, "Towards a Revolutionary Program for Negro Freedom," written by Harry Haywood in collaboration with Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, and completed in 1964. The first essay, "The Crisis and Growth of Negro Reformism and the Growth of Nationalism," addresses the reasons for the existing crisis in the Civil Rights movement regarding its tactics and goals, and, on the other hand, the rapidly growing development of African American nationalist sentiment. "The Two Epochs of Nation-Development" seeks to clarify the existence of a growing, revolutiuonary African American nationalist movement in the face of denial by liberal as well as left-wing commentators who variously argue that there was nothing of revolutionary import in the struggle for black rights, or that full assimilation into American society was that struggle's destiny. The third essay, "Is the Black Bourgeoisie the Leader of the Black Liberation Movement?," criticizes Harold Cruse's then recent and influential essay, "Revolutionary Nationalism and the Afro-American," for its insistence that black workers had no choice but to follow the "revolutionary" lead of militant black entrepreneurs in their struggle to exert control over retail markets located in black communities. Finally, "The Nation of Islam: An Estimate," assesses the positive as well as negative aspects of the Nation of Islam, and concludes that neither the Nation nor the assimilationist-oriented strata of African American leadership was capable of leading a revolutionary struggle for Black Power.

1. "The Crisis and Growth of Negro Reformism and the Growth of Nationalism," Soulbook 3 (Fall 1965): 203-207